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Sunday, September 30, 2012

For the first time in a LONG time, I was invited to a wedding!
Oh hello! This was a family wedding so we all trooped to a winery dressed in our best. Yes there was hail and rain forecasted plus it was in Gippsland. I had no backup dress and Mick insisted I wore this dress that he bought me. Which is all well and good except that the dress was not altered for length. I thought I would wear it with my Louboutin Very Prive. But how can you run after kids and plot through a winery wedding in them? I can barely sit in them! This is me trying to find shoes at the last minute and now I had an issue of having a dress that is too long. LOL

The mess trying to get ready

Face of the day - I don't do FOTD posts but because I scrubbed up a bit of alright.. I will. Illasmasqua neutral eye palette (all 4 colours), Laura Mercier Mineral Pressed powder in Real Sand. Nars Deep Throat blusher, Chanel Coco Shine 63 Rebelle and Dior 662 Ultra Gloss Flash on top. I have yet to work out if the LM pressed powder is actually a foundation or just a powder and whether I am even "Real Sand". There was nobody at the counter when I went there so I went to town testing all the shades.

We are so into Selfies

I finally found a pair of shoes - again circa 2005. Those were good years for me financial wise AHAHHA. Nude Chanel with metal CC across one of the front strap. It also has a metallic silver heel with gold CCs at the back. It's like amazeballs. I remember that I used to wear them to work, I should do that again.

Oh look, I'm dressed like a giant red packet in this dress

We are armed with weaponed balloons

The boys were pretty well behaved. But at some point in the day, someone brought out the big gun - an iPad. So they started running between the iPad and the big screen TV where everyone was watching the AFL Grand Final. D would even cheer when everyone else was cheering while eating his party pie. The groom's father is actually a kids' party balloon entertainer. He was so funny he had me in hysterics too. He asked if D could have a weapon of mass destruction. He made this sword and gave it to him but he said that he wanted a dog instead like Pickles'. Anyway, both balloons became weapons of mass destruction as they proceeded to whack each other with it for ages. I might have also joined at some point hitting Pickles on the head a fair bit (passive aggressive much?)

King's Jade Salt Pepper Pork Ribs

We were so tired the next day and can't think of cooking lunch ... so guess what! We had a craving for roast meat on rice. King's Jade is in Bulleen and it is amazingggg.. Today I tried the salt pepper pork ribs on rice and it was so yummy.

This stuff is horrifying

We went to Leo's for food shopping in the afternoon and I walked past this. Fluff. Fluff my friend is spreadable marshmallow. I will not even go there. This reminds me of my ex boss who brought a jar back for us from America. She claimed it was amazing and delicious. Nobody.. not one single person would touch it. It sat on someone's desk for months and finally we could throw it out after she went back home.

Everyone's had enough

This is what happens at 6pm when you go out for a drive to the supermarket because you have run out of plain flour. Both of them were sound asleep and Mick carried them in from the car. I'm not sure how D even managed to kick his shoes off and go back to sleep!

I am going back to my Mac and Cheese dinner and about to crash like these two boys.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Check out my random score from last week! I won the Brasserie Bread office lottery and it was certainly the most random thing ever. Who else would win BREAD?
It fed the entire team for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. Plus I managed to force people to take bread home.

My colleague kept laughing and saying that I was a Soviet benefactor giving bread out to everyone. The mail man was so fascinated with the delivery, he said he would bring it to my desk because of the size. I was like WHAT! Look at the size of that box.

BREAD and PASTRY BOX!!

I can tell you now that it was indeedy very heavy. It was filled with yummy dense loaves of goodness.
The crowd favourite had to be the olive bread. It was so good and that went really quickly.

Nutella run

I ran downstairs to get some Nutella for afternoon tea. It was $5 for a big ass jar - bargain.

My goodies to bring home

I brought these home and again the multigrain was amazingly yummy. But I was so over bread that I could not face eating it anymore at home. Mick and the boys went to town on them.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

As you know.. I do my wheeling and dealing on Twitter quite a bit. I do not know when/how I found Paul from Spun Fairy Floss - http://spunfairyfloss.com.au. I was earlier sent a trial pack with several flavours as Genevieve and Paul were still testing out flavours. No complaints at all from me.. amazing! Now that they have officially launched their order site, I had to buy some. My friend bought Maple and for some reason I thought I ordered Maple as well. But noooo... I did not!! I bought Coconut, Raspberry, Fig and Strawberry Macademia.

Spun's PinUp girl promo shoot

How cute is their PinUp promo shoot result? Spun does not use artificial colours of flavours. These are naturally flavoured and I can tell you.. this stuff tastes amazing and it actually taste like raspberry! I am not sure how they do it (trade secret I guess!) but gosh they do it well. All the floss is not coloured so it is white. But white food never tasted so good. I am waiting patiently for when Coconut & Lime is available. I do not really eat much dessert but this is moreish.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Due to peer pressure (yes I blame you ladies on #bbloggersoz LOL) I am now on Facebook.
As you can see there's a hot looking "Like" widget on the right now. But jump on http://facebook.com/porkchopsnest as I am feeling very "unliked" at the moment.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

I picked this up because the sales lady at the checkout upsold me. Yes I got upsold! At MY CHEMIST! Woohoo.. $2.95 or something at half price. Alright, I will dig through this bin. She suggested that I look at the Fruities collection as it has a fruity scented smell. I thought ok why not. I have not had scented nail polishes since Anna Sui glitters back when I lived in Singapore. Yes my teenage years. The smell on this one was a little not to my taste. The scent lasted about 2 days and the cranberry just smelt really odd to me. Maybe it's a personal preference with this one.

Oh look lavender

We have lavenders in the garden and they are looking pretty good. We used to have a big wall of them at the fence and they were WAY overgrown. It was pretty yucky when Mick tore them out. Think snails galore for many months. Yes ... Gross. I quite like lavender and I am really glad that these have taken off.

I has perfume

I brought this into the office for a colleague as she asked me what I was using. This was bought in Korres Singapore which stocks their entire range of perfume. Pretty reasonable for S$50!

Friday, September 21, 2012

A girflriend asked if I wanted to have lunch.. sure thing! Should we also go to Myer to have a browse? Of course you would!

You know how you walk around aimlessly without any plans to buy anything and then BOOM.. random score? Holler... We were looking at Mel shoes that were about $45-50. I didn't know that Melissa had a cheaper sister range called Mel. There you go.. you learn something new.

Mel Jelly Shoes

I was wondering around the discount section of Myer as you would! And I saw this shoe with no price tag and no indication if it was on sale or just dumped at the wrong section. By some random luck it was my size. So I said that I told the lady that I would buy them. You pretty much have to stalk someone and just stand next to them until she is available to serve you in Myer as you would know.

When she scanned them, they were reduced by an additional 30% and was $20. Yeah ok I'll take them! I wear them to take the boys swimming as all the fighting and yelling means sometimes I have to stand really close to the water and used to get my sneakers wet. It is still slightly yucky when you have wet toes but because they are jelly they dry really quickly. Yay!! Random Score shopping rocks.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ok so thanks to Julie at I dream in Chocolate I had won the Nigella How to be a Domestic Goddess book if you recall.

Zesty lemonsssss

The amazing thing is Nigella is telling ME how to be a domestic goddess.. I joke. Ok I had made the little cupcakes from this book in the food processor. It went really well except Miss Lawson failed to tell me that it only fills 8 cupcakes. And they were small cupcakes not the full to the brim ones that I normally make. That is fine! But still I wondered how she could claim this recipe made 12!?

We had a ton of lemons and the boys were sanding the deck and playing about outside. So I sneaked in to make lemon and raspberry muffins. It worked really well I have to say!
The idea I think was to curdle the milk with the lemon juice into some sort of buttermilk. It was moist, yummy and easy to make. You just melt the butter and you do not have to cream sugar and butter.

Ta da Muffins

I might have been a bit stingy on the frozen berries. I used a mixed berry mixture that was frozen. Probs should have chucked more into the batter. But it was really yummy.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

I think I was the last Chinese in the area to find out about Dessert Story opening in Doncaster Westfield! I have never tried this but I keep seeing this Dessert Story popping up on Instagram. I finally stumbled on it and it is right outside Coles and ANZ Bank.

The funny thing is, the Chinese words mean "Dessert House" but I am not sure why they are called Dessert Story, perhaps it is because there is already a Dessert House in the CBD/Chinatown.

So I had a shock of my life when this arrived on my table. Lucky I only ordered one thing. Also lucky as it is $10. $10!!! There was a huge pile of ice cream infront of me and I nearly freaked out. When I started eating the ice cream, I realised it was a light fluffy shaved ice texture. Which sort of was weird yet pleasant at the same time. D did not touch it at all but Pickles hoed in like it was Christmas, desperately fishing for ice cream and taking out the red beans.

I think I will get something else next time... looking forward to taro balls or something really Chinese next time.

Monday, September 17, 2012

This weekend was uber exciting for me. I had taken off Friday AND Monday. Yeah like seriously 4 day weekend. Woohoo...

One the sad note, our Nespresso is busted and the replacement machine did not come in time. Seriously - this is why you pay so much for your machines. You get one loan machine sent to you while they take yours away to fix. They will not loan frothers but still!!! Ok George Clooney should also deliver said replacement but Star Track Express will do.

So on Friday, I hustled the boys out the door to childcare (this reminds me I have not paid her yet!) and got myself to my 8.45am. Yes people 8.45am appointment at Sanctum Body Therapy. They are an exclusive La Clinica product beauty spa. I had the Signature Treatment and it was amazing. Look what I received on my way out? I thought it was a discount card but when I opened it later, it was a giftcard for the same treatment that I had. I thought I could cry!

Gift card for another treatment!

I also had lunch with my BFF on Victoria St. Who can say no to Calamari, spicy Tom Kha soup and rice? Mmmm rice.

THEN.. some more shopping at Doncaster. As if I had not spent enough. I bought some Nespresso crealto pods. We needed pods but really I wanted a coffee and did not want to pay for one. C'mon... i wanted to try the limited edition pod alright? And I did buy pods.. 90 of them pods. And with no machine!

Got pods, no machine that works!

Then it was time to update the Country Road work pants situation. I had been scraping the bottom of the barrel with work pants. Nothing much really takes my fancy and I had to go back to Country Road. As these black pants do not ever go on sale, I just had to buy them at full price. The good news is inflation did not hit them either. $99 and the striped Tshirt was $39.95.

Country Road work clothes haul

I totally forgot that I had a $20 Myer gift card so guess what?! I had to buy a yellow dress from Target. It was only $49 but I do not normally buy Target clothes unless they are on sale. I thought why not, there is my size which is hard to find in Target and I had a gift card. I am undecided on it. Let me know if I should keep or return!

Target Yellow Dress Keep or Return?

Yesterday the boys had to recover from their colds. I actually managed to get a home visiting doctor to see Daniel as he was coughing so hard. But on Saturday, we turned on the bubble machine. I have to admit I also secretly love the old bubble machine. How cute is the hippo!

Bubble Machine Fun

It was time to fight the ironing pile that was growing so high. I had been wearing the same old same old to work - the non-ironing required dresses and I was wondering if people were noticing. HAHHA

Sunday, September 16, 2012

You know when you have a noodle craving (that would be me everyday) and nothing quite hits the spot except for Ramen? There are faux ramen and real ramen. Faux is when the place is runned by Chinese and the staff are yelling in Cantonese or most likely Chinese these days. I'm looking at you Ajisen. My colleague calls Ajisen tasty, I call it a MSG hell. I am not one who hates MSG, I am Chink.. i eat MSG. But I walked away from Ajisen about to cry from MSG overload after lunch. I don't remember it being that bad from when they opened a few years ago.

Salivating over Ramen

OMG about to cry... gyoza and ramen. Double whammy! This is the standard soup stock and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. The noodles is $10 and you add $4 for green tea and gyoza/salad. Both Mick and I stupidly tried to drink the tea with the strainer still on. HAHAHAH I was like WTH man, I want to drink my tea but it's filled with leaves and rice. Until we realised... oopppssss you lift the top level up. Oohhhhhh...

Bento Box set

D and Pickles shared a crispy chicken bento box. Check that out... Pickles pretty much drank one bottle of orange juice and refused to eat anything other than a few pieces of chicken. D pretty much only wanted rice except we had to dig the sesame seeds out and did not want chicken. This is when I decided no drinks before the food arrives for the boys anymore.

Balls.. just balls with squid

When I was still living in Singapore a friend of a friend started the chain of these squid balls with his Japanese business partner. It was a huge hit... and actually they still exist. Which is a big deal in fickle minded Singapore. In fact a few other people started their own ball versions. I can never resist ordering these takoyaki balls if they are on the menu. And if you look at what I had, I clearly did not need it! And actually I did not finish it. The texture of the balls were not as nice as my teenage memory of what I ate in Singapore, it was a little hard or maybe I was too stuffed to eat anymore!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

We had gone to Trunk previously for a team lunch. But I do believe that the menu has grown since a year ago. Last time I was there I had a pasta. But this time I ordered a minute steak with onion rings.

The steak was fantastic. Seriously so good. The onion rings were really hard though. I had some trouble cutting into them. In the end I grabbed it and started munching into it but had to leave some of the onion ring behind (felt bad!).

The tiramisu (sorry no pic as we inhaled it so quickly) that I shared with a colleague was amazing. I also managed to steal a spoonful of sticky date pudding. Honestly order the sticky date pudding. It is sweet but gosh it is good!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

I used to stand in line at the supermarkets and wonder who on earth would buy those 3litre bottles of milk.
Well.. points thumbs to self. I do now.

I cannot remember the exact moment when our household started going through 3litres in like 2 days. Picture this image of Pickles standing at the fridge door in desperation YELLING at us. AHHHH AHHHHHH And sometimes he yells MILKKKKKKKK. And everyone thinks he is an angel.

Everyone knows I am a big bargain hunter. It is called tightness so that I can afford those designzerz goodiez. :) But I made a conscious effort to pick up non-Woolworth/Safeway or non-Coles branded milk today. $1 a litre yay for us consumers and we are now used to paying that much. But I had guilt the other day about anti-competitiveness and about the dairy farmers. So think of the farmers people!

Oh hai I has milk

FYI Home Brand milk froths really badly in the Nespresso frother if anyone is interested. Aldi brand is good but not Home Brand!

So I bought Pura and honestly if you have a look at the shelves there is one "level" of this brand now and not much else. Which is not a good sign as a consumer that wants choice.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Ok I am going to come out and say it. I don't often have freezer meals - as you can tell from my posts. I would say the most is 2/3 a month? Actually maybe less than that. I cannot bear to have another one for a long time.

So today I went out to get chicken and some casserole meat from the butcher. This butcher is conveniently next to a fruit and veg store and .... quite possibly the best takeaway charcoal chicken shop in the surrounding 15kms from my house. Actually make it 20kms. I totally resisted getting a salad and chip quarter chicken. Believe me it was hard as I really and I mean really love this store.

You know when you have bits and pieces of things left in the kitchen and pantry? And you know that it will end up in the bin if you do not eat it? Yeah that was my dilemma today. So I grabbed everything and put this together. This took less than the 6mins to nuke the freezer meal.

My let's throw all the leftovers together lunch

Half a multigrain bagel, toasted with butter and cream cheese (no low fat in this house). 2 slices of smoked salmon, a quarter of an avocado, some free range ham and 2 little yummy bocconcini balls. Bocconcini is underrated in my opinion. I have to say that the bagel was still incredibly yummy and not stale. I love the Beans and Bagel shop on Johnston St.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Guess what the boys found on Saturday morning. Oh I am going to play with packaging. They loved it. They called it snow and Pickles was pretending he was a crane making crane noises and lifting and dropping the protective packaging up and down. Hilarious! ... not that hilarious when it comes to cleaning up. Mick moved it all outside the back door.... which only means that they found it the next day again. Oh my goodness....

Oh look what is that? SUN!

How good was the weather on the weekend? It meant that we could go out and have some fun. This is D wanting to push his Dad who almost knocked him over at one point. Anyway that swing without the protective chain is the scene of the crime where I may or may not have failed to catch Pickles when he fell over backwards a week ago - head first. He has never asked to go back on that swing again.

Retrolicious bathroom

There was a retrolicious California bungalow house that was open for inspection when we were at the playground. I told Mick I wanted to go have a look. It had the most beautiful facade and a gorgeous porch.. hello PORCH. I told him that he had to go have a look at the bathroom. Check out that bathroom! It would have been the height of sophistication in the 1950s. Pink and grey throughout, even the sink and vanity was this colour scheme. And no, we are not looking for a new house. But this one is on the market for auction advertised at $1.1-$1.2M if anyone is interested.

Oh hai Kitty! I eated it!

I actually went out this weekend too people! Yeah like OUT in the night. Like I did Chap Laps! LOL more like I was stuck in 11pm traffic on Chapel Street outside Jam Factory. Check out BFF K's Hello Kitty party. I had forgotten what Chapel Street near the Toorak Road side looked like these days. Hello where did all those fancy high rise apartments on Toorak Road come from? And did you know that there is an Urban by Target store open near Jam Factory now? Came back and had such a bad night as the boys kept crying and wanted to wake up at 4am. Poor Mick and his wrecked/tired Fathers' Day. I did a bagel run with the boys the next morning so that he could have a bit of sleep. This is lucky that we had Faux Fathers' Day last week.